Microsoft’s efforts to hawk Windows to otaku using the power of moe look to have reached their zenith with Windows 7’s Madobe Nanami, and quite possibly their nadir with the pair of generic ‘blobs trotted out to support sales of Windows 8, apparently the most loathed Windows OS since Vista.

The Japanese release of Windows 7 has seen OS-tan fans go wild over the highly appealing official Windows 7 mascot Nanami Madobe, who appears in the high resolution and high quality wallpapers included here.

It lacks loads of stuff. For all the huge bloat, no decent media player (mkv support etc), no music player, no normal browser, have to pay extra for decent office software, etc. etc.
Wasn't the whole... More

Anonymous commented on May 13, 2010 14:53

Win7 is OK, but I hate the fact that it lacks a decent network browser. You can't even see computers on the network by Workgroup which makes it quite useless when I'm working.... More

The sordid details of the case of an otaku, Takanori Hoshijima, who obsessed over the prospect of creating a sex slave, and then attempted to carry out this deranged plan by kidnapping and violating a lady into submission, instead botching it and murdering and dismembering her, made much of his otaku proclivities.

He was said to play eroge constantly and even to have published his own doujinshi, under the title of “Masa ni Gaidou” – “Truly Depraved”.

The cover to the doujinshi, a volume focusing on the violation and bondage of an OS-tan, is visible above, as it is still listed (but out of stock) in certain online retailers. The author is listed as 寝ろ / Nero (Sleep!).

A gallery of objects curiously rendered into moe female characters. Rather purely exploring than the usual military or software themes, here we also see anthropomorphised food, coins, cigarettes and mobile phones, along with a great deal of other odd creations.

Eraser-tan and Derringer-tan struck me as rather amusing, along with Nvidia-tan…

I came across a very nice collection of OS-tan images here and here, the best I’ve seen, and I’ve taken the liberty of mirroring the most interesting below (some are wallpaper sized). The kind treatment given to Windows 95 seems a little inexplicable now, but I suppose that is the effect of time. I certainly approve of the Windows 2000 adulation though – as fine a Windows OS as could be, for its time. Vista makes me laugh, but then so does the OS.

If you’re not familiar with OS-tan, these are attempts to anthropomorphise the features of various operating systems (mostly Windows) using anime styled characters; some of them are, in my opinion, very witty, and the vast majority are quite cute or sexy.